Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Monday, June 22nd. I'm Mac Watson

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Wyoming needs tens of thousands of new homes, but only a fraction of the need is under construction because builders say the math doesn't work. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that even middle-class wages aren't high enough to afford to buy houses while home-building costs just continue to rise.

"They're building homes that are 400,000 and up, and so why not any affordable units for regular working class people who have a median income of 75,500. When I went to developers about why aren't people building homes in this range, that would be the affordable range for Americans, and they basically can't pencil out below $400,000. So we have this huge gap, between $300,000 and $400,000. They can't make the numbers work."

Scott Hoversland, who heads up the Wyoming Community Development Authority, puts the number of homes the state needs somewhere between 28,000 to 38,000 by 2030 — roughly 2,070 to 3,680 homes annually to keep up with population growth and aging infrastructure.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Cheyenne judge Friday ordered the Wyoming Board of Equalization to apply a law capping residential property tax increases at 4% annually, for now, despite the board's claim the cap violates the Wyoming Constitution. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Gov. Gordon sued the board last week.

"Gordon's office, through the Attorney General's personnel, asked Judge Hibben, 'Hey, make the tax board follow the law real quick while we sort through these tax values.' And Judge Hibben granted that request. The judge basically said, 'Look, we're going to sift through the constitutional issues. The court's going to look at those and decide, but for now you just follow the law.' So, this is what we call a temporary restraining order. It's generally a very quick court order telling people what they're supposed to do while the controversy is going on in court."

The Wyoming Constitution calls for equal and uniform property taxes within each tax category, and this tax cap creates stark disparities in how some homes, despite being nearly identical, are taxed in different regions, the report says.

Read the full story HERE.

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A tornado made a rare appearance in Sublette County on Saturday, bringing with it more than 700 power outages. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that Meteorologist Don Day calls it a "landspout" tornado.

"It's not a true tornado in the sense that it comes down from the clouds, rather it's a spinning closer to the surface that winds its way up to the clouds, and it lasted probably no more than 30 minutes, and even that's really long. They tend not to be long-lived, and they're not as destructive as tornadoes. So it was literally just a perfect storm of circumstances as thunderstorms and a cluster of thunderstorms was moving through Wyoming on Saturday that brought rain to some places and thunderstorms to others."

Meteorologist Don Day tells Cowboy State Daily that landspouts tend to be more common in the spring and summer, especially when Wyoming's area gets humid. When summer thunderstorms carry moisture into Wyoming, the likelihood of landspouts increases.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Casper man says his w